Im coming from an Alienware m11x (1st gen) that my girlfriend stole, I get to visit it now and then, but the time has come for me to replace that baby. The upside is that shenplays SWTOR with me. I know the intel 4000 series is a big improvement when it comes to games, but I'm looking for a system with a bit more oomph. That 11" clevo 1.5 inch thick system isn't doing it for me.

Somy has a couple of interesting (but pricey!) systems.

Their S series is 13 inch, 3.5 lbs, a 1600x900 screen, and sports a 640M LE. That would be great if not for that LE...The Z series is very sexy, 13 inch, 2.5 lbs, 1920x1080, and has a 7670 as an external addition through a media dock. That sounded promising until I found out the 7670 is a direct rebrand of the 6650, which is NOT a powerful card. On top of that the price of the Z strays into retina MacBook territory, which packs a badass 650M.

My preference would be to have a PC, well under 2k and in the 13 inch, 3lbs screen territory.

The other machines I've seen rocked GPUs like a 620m which, frankly I don't see the point of.

I know there's a trade off going to thin and light I'm not expecting a 680m in the thing, I'm just looking for the best one out there.

I would recommend the UX32VD, but it falls into the 620M category. It "can play some games" but it's hardly potent.

Have you thought about a 14" machine? I bet you could get some real mileage out of that relatively small increase in size. Vizio, Dell, Acer and HP would be good places to look for 14" ultrabooks to name a few, and you could also check out thin+lights that aren't ultrabook certified from Asus, Acer, and HP.

I love mine. The battery life kinda sucks but the screen/keyboard aren't that bad (make no mistake I would replace them with something better if I could). Curious as to what you don't like about it? The 13" equivalent to it seems to be something a lot of people are looking for but I'm sorry to say no one has made it yet. BTW, unless you get to at least a 640M I don't think the boost from a discrete GPU is worth it.

You should take a look and make sure the 640M LE performance is indeed below your needs. That really seems to be the top of the pile for the requirements you're asking for. Also, keep in mind, there's a reason why "gaming" laptops are NOT ultrabook thickness. With more performance comes the need for more cooling and more weight. Its very difficult to stuff sufficient cooling for a processor and a mid-high range GPU inside a <21mm chassis. I would agree that 14" laptops would open up more potential for better discrete GPUs.

Jon1984 wrote:Dell's new XPS 14" is to big for you

Well thats certainly a good solution, though I would go for the hdd+ssd model at $1,500 base config.

DPete27 wrote:You should take a look and make sure the 640M LE performance is indeed below your needs. That really seems to be the top of the pile for the requirements you're asking for. Also, keep in mind, there's a reason why "gaming" laptops are NOT ultrabook thickness. With more performance comes the need for more cooling and more weight. Its very difficult to stuff sufficient cooling for a processor and a mid-high range GPU inside a <21mm chassis. I would agree that 14" laptops would open up more potential for better discrete GPUs.

Jon1984 wrote:Dell's new XPS 14" is to big for you

Well thats certainly a good solution, though I would go for the hdd+ssd model at $1,500 base config.

I'm very well aware of the tradeoff, I'm just looking for the best option out there. According to the charts you linked, the 630m on the 14 inch XPS is about the same or slightly slower than the 640m LE.

I love mine. The battery life kinda sucks but the screen/keyboard aren't that bad (make no mistake I would replace them with something better if I could). Curious as to what you don't like about it? The 13" equivalent to it seems to be something a lot of people are looking for but I'm sorry to say no one has made it yet. BTW, unless you get to at least a 640M I don't think the boost from a discrete GPU is worth it.

Yeah that's it exactly if a system with a 640m without the "LE" was to come out I think that would be a winner. I'd take the extra heft it would take to keep it cool, can't imagine it would be much more. I was very tempted by the Clevo, but the reviews about the screen, trackpad and and build quality killed it for me.

Gigabyte has a new "ultrabook" coming out soon. 14" and fairly thin. Comes with an i5 and a standard non-LE Geforce 640m with GDDR3. 1600x900 resolution. In terms of ultrabooks, it is on the bigger side, but offers quite a bit more performance. I also like how it can support an mSATA SSD plus a traditional 2.5" harddrive.

If the U.S. version gets a good review, I will buy one. Price starts at around $1100. My only concern is build quality. I do not completely trust Gigabyte. The prototype unit on display at a recent consumer electronics show had the crappiest keyboard flex I have ever seen. It looked like people were typing on a melted stick of butter. However, I heard that Gigabyte replaced the keyboard with something better.

First, the 630m is pretty weak in terms of GPU performance. It is the bottom discrete GPU you would ever want to consider in tandem with the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics.

Second, there appears to be a significant Wifi bug affecting the XPS 14 and 15 models. Terrible speeds with Wifi. It *appears* to be a hardware problem, similar to what happened with the iPhone. Dell has not figured out a fix yet. Check out the Notebook Review forums for more information.

On paper it sounds fantastic. I have to reserve judgment until the build quality is evaluated. The dual-fan design should really help prevent throttling of the GPU and CPU, which I understand is a real problem with other thin-and-light laptops that pack in serious hardware.

leor wrote:Yeah that's it exactly if a system with a 640m without the "LE" was to come out I think that would be a winner. I'd take the extra heft it would take to keep it cool, can't imagine it would be much more. I was very tempted by the Clevo, but the reviews about the screen, trackpad and and build quality killed it for me.

I'm a picky bastage.

Build quality? What review knocked it for that? Its a tiny little tank IMO and I'm a huge fan of the design aesthetic (the people who complain it has "none" may be right but that's exactly what I want). Also, as far as I'm concerned trackpads are for emergency use only, especially on a gaming laptop I couldn't care less as long as it functions at all. The screen is the biggest let down - there are a couple options our there but I'm still hoping someone figures out a better/higher res drop in replacement down the road.

Now that I think about it, you're right it wasn't the build quality, it was the track pad, the screen and lack of a backlit keyboard. I like to rock some late night SWTOR action in bed, and both my laptops (m11x and macbook pro) are backlit, and I can't go back now...

Possibly hackable bios to give GT 650m levels, not as powerful as the Z but similar price 3.7 lbs

2,999.00 gets me the Retina mac with a 2.6ghz quad core, 16gb or RAM a 512mb SSD, and that sick retina display at 4.5 lbs. The only 2 downsides are the much larger footprint, and the fact I will get aggravated switching back and forth to play games in boot camp.

Oh yeah and the money, I wish talking myself into spending more didn't happen so easily...

drfish wrote:Edit: BTW, why aren't you meeting Captain Ned somewhere in NY and catching a ride to the BBQ???

Ned's driving from NY? That's crazy. If I knew about that sooner (and he was willing) I might have been able to tag along. I was actually just telling my girlfriend we have to go to the next one since it will be number 10.

I am getting a Sony S in a couple of days. I am going to try the 735MHz MOD to be a little bit conservative. I decided that the price for the SSD's is too much directly from Sony, so I am getting the cheapest hard drive and replacing it with a 512gb M4. I lose RAID, but the performance of the m4 is good enough for me already.

rxc6 wrote:I am getting a Sony S in a couple of days. I am going to try the 735MHz MOD to be a little bit conservative. I decided that the price for the SSD's is too much directly from Sony, so I am getting the cheapest hard drive and replacing it with a 512gb M4. I lose RAID, but the performance of the m4 is good enough for me already.

I will be VERY interested in how you like it and how well the mod works. Please keep me posted!

It is only 3.9lbs has an 11.6 inch screen 1366x768 just like the m11x. The best thing is it has the Geforce 650m which you could plug in to an external monitor and play games on a larger screen yet have all the mobility you need at the same time. Battery is rated to last 6.5-7 hours. It is probably what I personally would upgrade to from my m11x at some point. It is highly configurable and more reasonable on some of its pricing than alienware. It is just a thought unless you are destined for a larger screen on an Ultrabook.

rxc6 wrote:I am getting a Sony S in a couple of days. I am going to try the 735MHz MOD to be a little bit conservative. I decided that the price for the SSD's is too much directly from Sony, so I am getting the cheapest hard drive and replacing it with a 512gb M4. I lose RAID, but the performance of the m4 is good enough for me already.

I was in the exact same position and ordered 2 Sony S13's. One older model for my wife with the AMD 6630M (1GB) and one 2012 model with the 2GB 640M LE. From what I've read, this is the newer Kepler core, where the 1GB 640MLE is Fermi.

I plan on light gaming as well. I had almost the same criteria:small and light (we're coming from 12.1" Acer Timelines)NOT be 1366x768non-glossy screendiscrete graphics (preferably not last generation)

The Sony S was one of the few that met my criteria. I wish that the graphics card was a little faster and the cost was a little lower, but I think we'll be happy. The fact that there are some SATA II/III discrepancies bothers me a little. I was following the 11.6" sager pretty closely because it was similar in size to our current machines, but the battery life wasn't thrilling me. I liked that there was a matte screen option.

The only other consideration was a Lenovo Y480 if they had good cards. For a while, I think they had the Fermi, but were moving to Kepler.

After receiving the machine I was immediately shocked at the poor quality of the screen. Everything else was absolutely great, good performance, GREAT gaming performance for the size very nice keyboard and touch pad, so I spent the weekend trying to use the machine and get over maybe the worst TN panel I've ever seen. It actually reminded me of the dualscan screens that used to come with 90s laptops.

Alas, in the end the screen rendered the thing unusable. I spanned some pictures next to my 3 year old macbook pro for comparison. I kept the light low and didn't use a flash.

Ideal viewing angle - bear in mind this angle represents about 5 degrees of viewing. any slightest shift in my position cause me to have to adjust the screen to be able to see anything.

From above

Higher angle

Low angle

From the left

From the right

It really is a shame because if they'd bothered to use a decent screen in a machine that set me back $1,600, I'd be a happy guy...

Thanks for drfish for providing much needed support and commiseration through this process!

I couldn't avoid the specs on the Gigabyte U2442 (I got the ULV U2442V version) and it's impressive. A 640M in a < 4lbs ultrabook. The 14" is just right for travelling and its really impressive with the SSD. $1200.

It was in stock last week, but it must have run out quickly - most of the US distributors have it backordered again.

Minor quirks: I will say, the sound isn't that impressive. The screen is 1600x900 but its a cheap TN panel which isn't all that impressive. The touchpad is textured, which takes some getting used to. Also there is no dedicated Pageup/down buttons, they are FN mapped to the Up/Down buttons.

No thunderbolt nor the 650M - we're assuming that Gigabyte intends to release an updated model later this year with these features.I would say the only thing that would be upgrade right now is the Asus Zenbook U500 - 15" with the 650M, full 1080 IPS screen and about 4.5 lbs. Looks to be a powerhouse if you're still waiting, but no idea about release date or price yet.

Leor, viewing angles like that represent everything that is wrong with the laptop market.

I don't understand how more people don't complain, because unless you're viewing super-bright, primary colours, they basically unusable.

My Dell Studio17 had one of the better TN screens on the market, and even then, coming from a 15", IPS, 1920x1200 panel, it was like having cataracts and staring at the sun.

What I don't understand is how they get away with using TN panels that are SO BAD. TN itself has weak viewing angles, but I honestly never see such godawful panels in desktops. Laptops have brought about an all-new low, where you can get (brace yourself):

Low brightness

Bright black levels

Screen-door effect

High-gloss coating

poor colour gamut

horrific colour accuracy (deltaE of 15+)

Input lag

Ghosting and smearing

Uneven brightness

backlight bleeding

...all rolled into one.

Truly, utterly, /facepalm.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.